Life, The Universe, and Everything
by andromeda's song
Summary: "John, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it." Sherlock's had an unfortunate amount of cheap wine-for a case, you see. When John returns home, he discovers the tipsy detective and shenanigans ensue. A present for Rainy Days-and-Daydreams. (Contains lots of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy references.)


**Just a small piece of hilarity for Rainy Days-and-Daydreams, cause she deserves it. **

* * *

John climbed the steps towards 221 B with a clinging weariness beginning to settle in his limbs. It had been a horrendously long day… horrendously long week, actually. Sherlock had been on a particularly devilish case over a dead woman, a lost engagement ring set with a priceless blue carbuncle and a Christmas goose. John honestly wasn't too solid on the details, since he'd been booked at the clinic (flu season was in full swing and London had been hit pretty badly) all week. Not to mention the fact that Sherlock had insisted he was able to solve the case in a matter of hours, barely giving a four on his ridiculous scale. Lestrade had blackmailed him to take the case anyway, and both he and John had been not-so-secretly triumphant when the case turned out to be closer to seven and a half. As such, Sherlock had been withdrawn and distracted all week, alternating between pacing around the flat mumbling things about geese and pacing around London, always coming back empty-handed and sometimes covered with feathers. It would have been funny if only it hadn't been making Sherlock absolutely furious. He'd been on a short fuse all week.

Which is why the sound of riotous laughter echoing from behind the closed door of their flat confused John.

There could be no mistaking the rich baritone chuckles rippling out from under the door, a sound that was not unfamiliar within the walls of 221 B, but still rare. John was about to unlock the door when he heard Mrs. Hudson's step on the stair behind him. He turned around to greet his landlady.

"Mrs. Hudson," he started. "What in the name of—'''

"John, thank goodness you're home!" Mrs. Hudson interrupted. Another gleeful laugh bubbled out into the landing, causing the landlady and the doctor to look at one another questioningly.

"He's gone round the bend, John," Mrs. Hudson whispered conspiratorially. "He's been knocking about for at least an hour, giggling like a school boy and occasionally shouting."

"What's he shouting about?" John asked.

"The last I heard, he was shouting about knowing the answer to life, the universe, and everything," Mrs. Hudson said.

"Fantastic," John muttered. "Let's go see what he's done now. He probably inhaled one of his own experiments and is high as a kite." With that, John opened the door of 221 B and stepped in with Mrs. Hudson following behind him.

Sherlock Holmes, the world's only consulting detective and brilliant madman extraordinaire of Baker Street, was standing in the middle of the living room in his bathrobe, a fluffy white towel around his shoulders and a potted plant in his hands. They looked like petunias.

"John!" he exclaimed, setting the plant down on the coffee table and then striding over to them. "And Mrs. Hudson, what a surprise! I hope you've brought your towels!" Sherlock bent slightly to plant loud kisses on both of their foreheads, a move which shocked both the doctor and the landlady. The detective then grinned broadly and shuffled off to the kitchen, tripping over nothing and stumbling, leaving John and Mrs. Hudson gaping in the doorway.

"This must be a Thursday," John mused. "I never could quite get the hang of Thursdays."

Mrs. Hudson started to say something, but was interrupted by the sound of Sherlock's voice echoing out from the kitchen.

"John? John, bring my calculator in here immediately. I—I need to quantify the vector of space occupied by a sperm whale in a zero-gravity environment. Don't worry, though…relevant to the case, of course. Carbuncle in the goose." He giggled. "Mrs. Hudson? Perhaps you'd be so kind as to bring us something almost—though not entirely unlike—tea?" He then began to sing sea shanties in a falsetto higher than John would have expected from him.

"John," Mrs. Hudson said, "is he… drunk?" The woman giggled under her breath and a wide smile graced her face.

John couldn't help but smile back. "I do believe you've hit the nail on the head, Mrs. Hudson."

"Oh this is priceless," the elderly woman giggled. She patted John's arm and turned towards the door. "Have fun, dear."

"What, you mean you're going to leave me with drunken Sherlock all by myself?" John asked, only half-kidding.

"Nothing you can't handle, John!" Mrs. Hudson said as she retreated down the stairs. John was about to shout something else down the stairs after her, but he was distracted by a yelp from the kitchen. He shut the door to their flat and hustled into the kitchen, driven by the steady sound of keening echoing from inside.

Sherlock was standing over the kettle, clutching his right hand to his chest and wailing pitifully in a completely uncharacteristic show of pain. John walked up to him and reached for the appendage, which Sherlock surrendered after a brief tussle. The palm of his hand was red and inflamed, probably burnt on the still bubbling kettle beside them.

"Sherlock, why did you touch the kettle with your hand?" John asked exasperatedly.

"Cause I'm drunk," the man answered with a hiccup.

John chuckled. "You are drunk, but that doesn't mean you should touch boiling kettles, you know. Stay here, I need to get my kit so I can bandage your hand. Don't… don't touch anything else, okay?"

"What a depressingly stupid machine," Sherlock grumbled, frowning at the kettle. John chuckled again and dashed off to the lavatory for his medical kit. When he came back to the kitchen, Sherlock was sitting at the table, his face planted on its surface, his right arm thrown out dramatically. John picked up the appendage carefully and began to spread a cooling balm on it, which made Sherlock sigh against the table in relief.

"So why were you drinking, Sherlock?" John asked. In the time that they'd spent living together, John had never seen the man like this. He rarely drank, and when he did it was only a glass of wine with dinner or a celebratory glass of cognac on the holidays (which he always drank with a tinge of snarkiness towards "holiday sentiment"). Seeing the detective positively pissed and doing things so out of character (i.e. kissing his forehead, carrying petunias, touching boiling kettles) was a little…bizarre.

"I've always thought there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe," Sherlock mused, picking his head up from the table and watching John with bleary eyes.

"Is that why you were drinking? Because you're discovering that there's something fundamentally wrong with the universe?" John smiled. "And I thought the police came to you for help because you're brilliant."

"I am brilliant," Sherlock replied indignantly. "I'm just tipsy."

"We've established that," John said.

"Johnnnnnn," Sherlock keened. "You're turning into a penguin. Stop it." John gaped at him and made a sound of disbelief. Sherlock squinted his eyes closed and mumbled, "My head hurts, John." The lanky man seemed to crumble in on himself and face-planted onto the table again (albeit gently, because his head hurt, you see).

John sighed and packed away his kit, having finished bandaging Sherlock's hand. He stood and walked over to stand beside the man, grasping at his shoulders and tugging gently.

"Come on then," John said. "Up you get. Go have a lie-down on the sofa. I'll bring you some water and some pills for your head. How bad does it hurt?"

Sherlock stood and swayed in John's grasp a little before righting himself with a wince and a cluck of his tongue. "It feels like my brains are being smashed in by a lemon wrapped around a gold brick."

John made a face and nodded slowly. "Right… okay then." He made a mental note to give Sherlock an extra pill for his head. "Go to the sofa, I'll be right out." He watched Sherlock stumble into the living room and then went back to the lavatory to get Sherlock some paracetamol. John filled a glass with water at the sink and took it and the pills back out into the living room, where Sherlock was huddled on the couch, muttering under his breath. He sat down at Sherlock's feet and nudged him gently. Sherlock peered down at him with a frown and then sat up, realising who it was and what he was holding. He downed the pills and swallowed half the glass of water before handing it back to John.

"Thank you," Sherlock mumbled. Before John could reply, Sherlock had wriggled around on the sofa and turned so that he could put his head in John's lap, the rest of his long body curling into a ball. John couldn't resist the upwelling of affection for the man in his lap. He was used to seeing Sherlock in all of his incarnations: focused, obnoxious, bored, arrogant, grateful, happy, sad, etc…. but affectionate and…cuddly? This was new and not entirely…unwelcome. And John had never imagined that drunken Sherlock would be an affectionate Sherlock.

John slipped the fingers of his right hand into Sherlock's curls and began to slowly stroke and massage his scalp. He rested his left hand unobtrusively on Sherlock's bony hip, listening to the muted hums of satisfaction rumbling forth from the detective's chest. After a few minutes, the hums receded and Sherlock fell asleep, John still stroking his curls.

The detective was out for about an hour and a half before he woke up again, more lucid than before, but from the way he squinted his eyes and groaned, his head still hurt. John got up (ignoring Sherlock's whine of 'don't leave, John!') and got the man another glass of water. Sherlock dutifully downed the glass and it helped a little to ease the papery feeling in his throat.

"How long have I been asleep?" he asked.

"Only an hour and a half," John reported, taking his seat again and adjusting so that Sherlock could resettle his head in John's lap.

Sherlock grunted in response. "I will never understand the apparent joy that people find in getting absolutely pissed. It dulls the senses and makes it so very hard to think clearly. Also," he finished, rubbing his temples, "my head hurts fantastically.

John hummed in sympathy. "You can take some more pills in a few hours. In the meantime, just try to stay hydrated."

Sherlock sighed. "Yes, mother."

"Hey, you're the one that decided to flatshare with a doctor," John said.

"Yes, well, I didn't ask you to be my doctor, now did I? I asked you to be my flatmate," Sherlock retorted. He grumbled something else under his breath before he sighed and said, "But thank you anyway."

John chuckled. "Of course, you great git." The doctor threaded his fingers back into Sherlock's hair and continued the gently massage his scalp. Sherlock closed his eyes and relaxed into the touch.

"So are you going to tell me why you're drunk?" John asked after a few silent minutes.

"Hmm?" Sherlock mumbled. "Oh…yes. The case."

"Care to elaborate?" John chuckled. "I'll need your notes so I can catalogue the case for the blog anyway."

Sherlock enjoyed the feeling of John's strong fingers on his scalp for a few more seconds before replying. "The engagement ring was inside the goose. Baker's girlfriend found it inside his sock drawer and got…what is the phrase? Cold feet? Anyway, it would seem that she has some commitment issues. So she took the ring to her uncle's goose farm and made one of the geese swallow it so that Baker wouldn't have it to give to her. The uncle saw her, confronted her, and in the tussle that followed, it would appear that she slipped on some ice and cracked her skull open on a protrusion of concrete."

"Jesus," John breathed.

"Mmm," Sherlock agreed, pushing into John's hand when he stopped stroking the soft curls. "I confronted the uncle, who admitted the whole thing. The goose in which the ring had disappeared was donated to a shelter for the holidays. I was forced to slip in incognito and…make merry with them in order to get the ring out of the bird's crop. There was a startling amount of cheap wine involved." He shuddered slightly and swallowed. "But I found the ring and it's in that box on the mantle, awaiting the return of Henry Baker, although he no longer has a fiancée to give it to."

"Fantastic," John muttered, returning his attention to the scalp massage.

"Anything else you'd like to know?" the detective asked.

John thought a bit before he grinned and said, "I didn't know you were well-versed in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."

Sherlock opened an eye and said, "Pardon me?"

John grinned down at his friend. "When I came home, you were running around the flat holding that bowl of petunias and wearing a towel around your shoulder. You also told me I was turning into a penguin and that I should stop it. You told Mrs Hudson you had the answer to life, the universe, and everything." John laughed as Sherlock's expression morphed from confusion to embarrassment.

"It was actually rather amusing," John contended. "Except that you burned your hand on the kettle. That was not one of your finest moments."

Sherlock's other hand strayed to the bandaged appendage. "I was wondering why it was throbbing so badly."

"I should wonder," John said.

A few minutes passed before John spoke again. "So are you really a fan of Douglas Adams or was that just a random piece of trivia lodged in the dusty crevasses of your mind palace?"

Sherlock chuckled lightly and John felt it reverberate in his own body. "It was my favourite as a teenager," he said. "There was always something delightfully absurd about it, yet subtly logical and brilliant."

John laughed. "It was my favourite too. For some reason I found myself identifying with Arthur Dent."

"I wonder why that is," Sherlock mused sleepily. "I'm going to sleep again, John. My head and hand hurt."

"Okay," John said, patting Sherlock's shoulder lightly. "I'll be right here."


End file.
